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Tony Lurcock grew up in Kent and was educated at Oxford. He became lecturer in English at Helsinki University, and subsequently at Åbo Akademi. He returned to Oxford for research, and taught there, and in America, until his recent retirement.

Selected passages from the accounts of nearly thirty travellers, together with Lurcock’s informed and entertaining commentary, chart the varied responses of British writers to the making of modern Finland up to 1917, the year of independence.

In No Particular Hurry – which continues Tony Lurcock’s documentation of British eye-witness accounts of Finland (see below) – the travellers include an increasing number of women; while enjoying the new comforts of regular trains and steamers, they respond not only to the glories of the scenery but to the excellence of Finnish education and in particular to the remarkable independence of Finnish women (Finland was the first nation to allow women to vote, and the first in which they entered parliament). The book includes a section on the Russian War of 1854–5, which brought the British fleet into the Baltic. Among those whose impressions are recorded here are Bartholomew James Sulivan, who was later to serve as Lieutenant on the Beagle and became a close friend of Charles Darwin, and Arthur J. Evans, who later found fame as the excavator of Knossos.

‘Mr Lurcock has unearthed some extraordinary insights into life in Finland as it entered the modern era’ – Chris Koenig, Oxford Times

‘In conjunction with the earlier volume, which starts in the eighteenth century, No Particular Hurry provides an excellent overview of British literature about Finland over a period of 150 years, as well as an account of the ways in which Finland has sought its place in the political and mental map of Europe.’ – Rainer Knapas, Books from Finland

‘... his occasional rather caustic observations make his commentary at least as entertaining as the travellers he quotes’ – Yvonne Hoffmann, Vasabladet

‘Impeccably researched, written in an accessible, lively and lucid style, with useful appendices, notes, and bibliography, this is a gem of a book which will delight the scholar and the general reader alike.’ – Mara Kalnins, Notes and Queries

‘At once both an anthology of extracts from British travel accounts and a rich mini-encyclopaedia of personalities, routes and destinations.’ – Rainer Knapas, Books from Finland